THE BLURRING OF CHILDHOOD AND THE MEDIA

Time is not lost, I deem, in bewailing and mourning our fate when answering tears stand ready in the listener's eye.

Prometheus Bound ^{1 1} Lynch's 1970 work, Christ and Prometheus: A New Image of the Secular, explores in three “acts” two pivotal questions that run throughout most of his works: “What is the place of the secular in a totally religious world?” and “What is the place of the sacred in an overwhelmingly secular world?” (p. 15). On page 49 he refers particularly to Images of Hope with these words: “In an earlier book, on hope, I tried to sketch a path of approximation to innocence for the mentally ill. There it was a matter of taking away from the sick the burden of finding a one, nonexistent right way in all situations, an inscrutable way of the will of God, that would come from outside our own wishes and would condition all of these wishes. There is no greater torment than this kind of endless, external search for innocence. We must restore the primacy of man as a wishing being who, as long as he is within reality, creates the right thing by the absolute unconditionality of his own wishing. This wish does not have to go out of itself.” Ironically, he wanted Christ and Prometheus entitled “In Search of Innocence” (p. 36). Presumably, the editors prevailed.

     

Books reviews

J. Neils (ed.), Goddess and Polis: The Panathenaic Festival in Ancient Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). Pp. 227, 24 colour plates, 170 b&w illus. $49.50 (£37.50) cloth; $19.95 (£13.95) paper. ISBN 0–691–03612–8 (cloth); 0–691–00223–1 (paper).

Steven H. Lonsdale, Dance and Ritual Play in Greek Religion (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). Pp. xxi + 352. Illustrations, bibliography, indexes. $39.95. ISBN 0–8018–4594–7.

Ramachandra Guha, Spin and Other Turns: Indian Cricket's Coming of Age (London: Penguin Books, 1994). Pp. xii + 158. Rs 100. ISBN 0–14–024720–3.

Robert Mechikoff and Steven Estes, A History and Philosophy of Sport and Physical Education: From the Ancient Greeks to the Present (Dubuque, Iowa: William C. Brown, 1993). Pp. 391. $29.50. ISBN 0–697–12159–3. Elliot J. Gorn and Warren Goldstein, A Brief History of American Sports (New York: Hill and Wang — Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993). ISBN 0–8090–1561–7. Pp. 290. $11.95.

Richard O. Davies, America's Obsession: Sports and Soceity since 1945 (Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace, 1994). Pp. 274. $16.00. ISBN 0–03–073332–4.

Ted Vincent, The Rise and Fall of American Sport: Mudville's Revenge (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994). Pp. 358. ISBN 0–8032–9613–4.

Leonard Koppett, Sports Illusion, Sports Reality: A Reporter's View of Sports, Journalism and Society (Urbana and Chicago: University of Ilinois Press, 1994) paperback reprint of book originally published in 1981. Pp. xiv + 296. ISBN 0–252–06415–1.

Gilbert Andrieu, Force et beauté. Histoire de l'esthétique en éducation physique (Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 1992). Pp. 252. FF150. ISBN 2–86781–125–2.

Charles Fountain, Sportswriter: The Life and Times of Grantland Rice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Pp. 327. $25.00. ISBN 0–19–506176–4.

Peter Levine, Ellis Island to Ebbets Field: Sport and the American Jewish Experience (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

Charles S. Prebish. Religion and Sport: The Meeting of Sacred and Profane (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1993). Pp. xix + 243. ISBN 0–313–28729–5.

Tom Derderian, Boston Marathon: The History of the World's Premier Running Event (Champaign: Human Kinetics Publishers, 1994). Pp. xxvi + 606. $21.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–87322–491–4.

Kevin McAleer, Dueling, The Cult of Honor in Fin‐de‐Siècle Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). Pp. 268. $24.95. ISBN 0–691–03462–1.     

Initial identification & selection bias versus the eventual confirmation of talent: evidence for the benefits of a rocky road?

Abstract

The relative age effect (RAE), whereby earlier birthdate children within a selection year are more commonly selected as talented, has been highlighted in the literature. As a consequence, these young athletes get into specialised training earlier and in greater numbers, leading (it is suggested) to a disproportionate opportunity for success. However, this disproportionality seems not to be manifest in senior teams. Accordingly, we examine the identification and conversion rates for academy rugby players, examining a sample of all players passing into and either graduating, or being dismissed from, a major English rugby academy. Data demonstrated a reversal of the RAE “benefit”, whereby late-birth players were less likely to be selected, but more likely to achieve senior professional status. Possible reasons are explored and, on the basis of our data, we propose a psychologically based explanation of greater “growth” due to additional challenge experienced by these initially disadvantaged younger players.     

The effect of an official match on repeated sprint ability in junior basketball players

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of an official basketball match on repeated sprint ability indices in male junior players. Ten (16 ± 1 years old; 183.6 ± 7.0 cm; 76.6 ± 8.0 kg) starting players for their teams performed three repeated sprint ability tests, before, at half-time and immediately after an official match. Each repeated sprint ability test consisted of 10 shuttle-run sprints of 30 m (15 + 15 m) separated by 30 seconds of passive recovery. The matches were video-taped to determine the frequency of eight types of movement patterns, and blood lactate concentration was measured before and immediately after each repeated sprint ability test. Differences in total time, ideal time and percentage decrement between tests was assessed by a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures, while a two-way ANOVA with repeated measures was used to identify differences in blood lactate concentration. The main results indicated a significant decrease in total movement frequency (-9.9%), high-intensity activity frequency (-13.3%), run frequency (-13.0%) and sprint frequency (-23.3%) in the second compared to the first half, and significantly worse total time and ideal time at the end of the match, compared to the start and half-time (differences ranging from -2.1% to -2.9%, P < 0.05). The practical implications of these findings suggest that regional basketball players should participate in conditioning sessions that focus on the improvement of repeated sprint ability.     

Scoping the Duals: Structural Challenges of Combining Further and Higher Education in Post-Secondary Institutions

Dual sector universities (or duals) are a growing international phenomenon that cut across the divide that typically exists in post‐secondary education. Duals combine ‘further’ and ‘higher’ education within a single institution providing enhanced opportunities for student transition between post‐secondary sectors. This paper reports the results of an international survey of duals in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK. The results indicate that duals operate divergent operational models in managing the structural challenges of cross‐sector education characterised as unitary and binary. Many duals contend that state and provincial government regulation militates against the integration of structures, processes and human resources within a dual sector context.     

Universal museums, museum objects and repatriation: The tangled stories of things

This paper discusses the contribution of the 2003 ‘Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums’ to the debate on repatriation. The ‘Universalist’ approach taken by the Declaration is first considered, noting the implications of its emphasis on art, the heritage of museums and objects, along with its focus on the sculpture of ancient Greece and the enlightenment origin of museums such as the British Museum. It is argued that it reveals an essentialist approach that derives from a particular Western perspective, rather than being truly ‘universal’, and then considers whether a similar problem underlies many of the arguments advocating repatriation. The second part of the paper explores the opportunities offered by an approach which emphasises the ‘biography of objects’. This demonstrates how the tangled histories of objects and their many meanings can be considered. Repatriation is shown to be able to result in an increase in knowledge and understanding, rather than its destruction, and so meets the declared aim of the Declaration to ‘foster knowledge by a continuous process of reinterpretation’.     

The Digital Curation Centre

The JISC and the EPSRCe‐science core programme will shortly establish a Digital Curation Centre to develop key research, services and generic tools needed by institutions and archiving bodies to manage digital collections over the long term. This article sets out its implications for ALPSP members and its relationship to other initiatives in e‐science and digital preservation.